Health-conscious consumers have been the driving force behind a continual increase in the production and sale of nutritional and probiotic beverages, supplements, vitamins, fruit and vegetable extracts, and the like. During the past decade, consumer appeal has shifted towards wellness drinks of a raw, organic and balanced nature. However, most commercial beverages do not provide or supply significant vitamins, antioxidants, proteins, amino acids, complex carbohydrates, antiviral, antibiotic and antitumor agents. Instead, many beverages intended to promote health improvement, wellbeing, energy and athleticism, are filled with artificial flavorings and colorings, which have been shown to have adverse effects on the human body. More recently, there has been increasing consumer awareness of the health benefits of naturally occurring fungi known as mycelium.
More accurately, mycelium is the vegetative part of a fungus, consisting of a mass of branching, thread-like hyphae. Fungal colonies composed of mycelium are found in and on soil and many other substrates. It is well known that mycelium is vital in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems for its ability to decompose plant plant material. Mycelium contribute to the organic fraction of soil, and their growth releases carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. Furthermore, some types of mycelium are known to increase the efficiency of water and nutrient absorption of most plants and confer resistance to some plant pathogens. Mycelium is an important food source for many organisms due to its high nutritional value.
Mushrooms, the fruit of Mycelium, have been revered for thousands of years by practitioners of traditional Asian medicine. The benefits of mushrooms consist of but are not limited to potent antioxidants, the ability to stimulate immune function in the human body, as well as stimulate metabolism, regrowth of nerves, anti-inflammatory properties, hypertension reducer and cholesterol reducer. To sum up mushrooms are documented as a true cure all. Mycelium is the primary source of the beneficial properties of mushrooms. Primarily, mycelium products are available for consumption as extracts of mycelium or powdered combinations of dried mycelium harvested from liquid culture or solid substrate cultures. However, there is complete lack of availability of consumable products delivering raw living mycelium in the form of a probiotic beverage.
Accordingly, there remains a need in the art for a method of producing a probiotic beverage incorporating mycelium in a raw live form, as opposed to a mycelium culture to harvest or an extract. That is, there is a need for such a product that is not intended for further inoculation of a substrate, as is the case during the production of spawn, inoculation slurry or mother culture. It would be desirable to provide such a method wherein the mycelium base is combined with water and flavoring to provide a final probiotic beverage. It would be further desirable to provide such live mycelium wherein further colonization of substrate is limited by temperature-related dormancy, as opposed to known methods that incorporate sterilization steps after inoculation, thereby killing the mycelium. It would be desirable to provide such a process that does not require separation or filtering of mycelium from the substrate, for subsequent insertion into a drink. It would be further desirable to provide a universal process that is not “species specific,” instead functioning with any Basidiomycota or Ascomycota fungi, and can be incorporated with bacteria or algae or any organism in the kingdom Monera. Preferably, the method would not be geared toward producing a specific molecule found within mycelia, but instead utilizing all proteins, polysaccharides and enzymes naturally occurring in the mycelium. Preferably, the method would incorporate the use of sugars and nectars as a nutrient base, as opposed to grain washes, grain broths, vinegar and the like. Finally, it would be desirable to provide such a process that avoids the use of an extraction process, such as hot water extraction, such that there is no separation of the mycelium from the liquid substrate.